Canada will apologize for a policy that forced native children into boarding schools in an effort over a century ago to “civilize” and assimilate the nation’s indigenous population into mainstream culture and religion, the Los Angeles Times recently reported.

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper will offer an expiation on behalf of the schools and will ask more than 150,000 students and their descendants to consider forgiving the country.

Sixty-year old Thomas Louttit was forced to attend one of the dozens of residential schools for eight years. He told the Times that children were assigned numbers for an identity, sexually abused and terrorized, thus leaving many scarred as adults. Many of Louttit’s friends committed suicide or battled alcohol abuse.

The federal government has already begun payouts from its $1.9 billion compensation fund for natives, the Times reported. Yet for many, monetary compensation is not enough. Dr. Roland Chrisjohn, director of the Native Studies program at St. Thomas University in Saskatchewan, said these schools and their affiliated churches must confront the truth.

“The important thing is that they own up to what they did, admit that it is unconscionable, and it was genocide,” Chrisjohn said.

The last residential school was shut down 12 years ago, decades after some of the first schools were built. In 1996, a federal commission determined that the schools were detrimental to the native population and outlined a program of healing and redress.

Newberry College was recently forced by the NCAA to “retire the use of ‘Indians’ as the school’s athletic nickname, effective with the end of all team’s current playing seasons.”

It’s appalling to me that the Newberry College press release uses “retire” to describe the termination of their racist nickname. Newberry College should have gotten rid of their nickname a long time ago. I decided to write them a letter:

Dear Newberry College,
It is time to remove your nickname, do not retire it, delete it. Listen and learn, using Native American imagery/names, unless tacitly approved by a Native Nation, is racist and harmful.

Please disband the “Indian Club” and the “Rowdy Reds.” Stop using arrowheads and spears as derogatory accessories to your racist nickname.

The state legislature in Arizona seems to be under the control of a white supremacist group. A recent proposal targets race-based groups (note that groups that are all or mostly white are not mentioned) that largely consist of students of color.

Arizona public schools would be barred from any teachings considered counter to democracy or Western civilization under a proposal endorsed Wednesday by a legislative panel.

Additionally, the measure would prohibit students of the state’s universities and community colleges from forming groups based in whole or part on the race of their members, such as the Black Business Students Association at Arizona State University or Native Americans United at Northern Arizona University. Those groups would be forbidden from operating on campus.

The creator of this racist, Euro-centric measure is Republican Russell Pearce. Pearce who was formally the Maricopa County Deputy Sheriff, sneaked the measure into a state senate bill on homeland security.

For the record, I believe that writing about white privilege and patriarchy is a positive thing to do. I feel very positive when I write about these particular barriers to social justice.

I feel that working towards the elimination of racism and sexism is a positive thing. It’s not an easy thing to do. It often hurts. There are comments that make my heart pound as I attempt to digest scattered remnants of thoughts that have been buried beneath piles of words. Sometimes it keeps me awake at night as I try to negotiate how to respond. It hurts to see comments from friends who say that I only talk about negatives. It is challenging.

The University of North Dakota (UND) is currently conducting a search for a new president. According to Diverse Issues in Higher Education, the 16-member search committee does not include any Native Americans. David Gipp, a UND alumnus and president of the United Tribes Technical College, has asked the State Board of Higher Education to appoint a Native American to the search committee. I feel that this is reasonable given the fact that Native students represent the largest minority group at UND. John Q. Paulsen, president of the State Board of Higher Education disagrees with Mr. Gipp and myself:

I’ve been reading a lot of news reports about a racist party in Delaware. On May 5th, several members of the Phi Sigma Pi honors fraternity at the University of Delaware held a racist party in which white students dressed up as stereotypes of Latinos.

The “South of the Border” party held on Cinco de Mayo featured white students with racial epithets on their shirts.

My current plate of consulting activities is currently full of heaping portions of projects. Thus the rationale for my recent spurt of blog posts. If I can get a lot of posts up in a short period of time then I may have more time to be productive. I could always go on another blogging hiatus but I’d rather not…

One of the aspects of blogging that seems to derail my productivity is the never ending buffet of comments from heterosexual white guys (hwg’s). My skin is fairly thick but my inner monologue always buzzes at me to address comments from hwg’s. In case you are wondering, I’m a card carrying member of the hwg club. I think that sometimes my identity is difficult to swallow for a lot of the hwg’s who wander to my site. It does not surprise me…if I had met me about 3 or 4 years ago I would have probably had difficulty digesting the social justice banquet that is set on the table of this blog. Here’s to life-long learning, good friends, and listening.

I decided to pop out of my self-imposed blogging hiatus to address a recent comment on my site. It seems that a long-time reader of my blog, Shouting Thomas, has taken a bit of umbrage with, well, I guess my entire site — text and graphics included. According to Shouting Thomas, I am a “very silly young man.”

In order to fully comprehend Shouting Thomas’ comment, I feel that it is necessary to re-write his words as translated by my inner monologue.

For your reference and convenience, I am including the original comment sans inner monologue translations…